5 ms·

We have developed cheap glass that can be mass produced and sucks electricity from sunshine, can be placed on already occupied surfaces to produce 100x more ele

We have developed cheap glass that can be mass produced and sucks electricity from sunshine, can be placed on already occupied surfaces to produce 100x more electricity than we are currently consuming. It requires basically no maintenance or operating costs for decades and is xheap enough for an average home-owner to meet at least half of their electricity needs. We have also discovered cheap containers that can be built using the fourth most common element in the earths crust to store that electricity for when it's needed. All of this can be built cheaply, massively, quickly, and be deployed anywhere with no conceivable risks of either massive disasters or proliferation of destructive weapons. The end result is electricity creation distributed everywhere, so cheap that it's realistic to have small communities provide all the electricity they need. Resilient to failure, sabotage or natural disasters. Why argue for massive amounts of money, manpower and time being spent to create central power plants that take a decade to build, end up controlled by a few masters who can milk the customers at will forever, when we can have so much better?

defrost 4d ago
> Fossil plants however can be fully decommissioned with 0 remaining costs You say that, but someone still has to pay those costs which are rarely factored in and are significant. To the north of my state we are faced with the costs of decommissioning and removal of 35 platforms, 6076 km of pipelines and static umbilicals; 483 subsea lifts; 11 floating facilities, 120 risers and 548 wells to be plugged - in addition to kilotons of offshore steel and concrete. eg: One project is the Northern Endeavour is a 274-metre floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) facility. The Australian Government took responsibility for the decommissioning of the Northern Endeavour after the liquidation of its owner. These are non trivial undertakings with costs running into the billions.
- Kon5ole 4d ago
  You're absolutely correct that oil and gas extraction activities need to be properly decommissioned, and that is expensive. But that's a separate activity from shutting down electric power plants. Oil rigs will continue to operate even if all gas and oil power plants were shut down tomorrow, since only about 25% of all oil and gas is used for electricity generation.
leonidasrup 4d ago
Cheap solar, yes you can now buy PV quite cheap. How much of this costs (research, developmemt, building large factories in China) was payed by German EEG money and different subsidies? Also subsidies in form of cheap Chinese coal electricity, polysilicon production is very energy intensive. Costs estimates for Energiewende are in hudreds of bilions of euros. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13705-017-0141-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13705-017-0141-0 https://www.euractiv.com/news/blackout-the-battle-to-rewire-germanys-energiewende/ https://www.euractiv.com/news/blackout-the-battle-to-rewire-... The Private and External Costs of Germany’s Nuclear Phase-Out https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article-abstract/20/3/1311/6520438 https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article-abstract/20/3/1311/652...
- Kon5ole 4d ago
  >Cheap solar, yes you can now buy PV quite cheap. This is what matters. >How much of this costs (research, developmemt, building large factories in China) was payed by German EEG money and different subsidies? This doesn't matter whatever the answer is. Cheap solar is what matters, not how humanity made the breakthrough or who paid for the research or build-out. Personally, I think China deserves credit here. They made a political decision to develop batteries, solar and EV's as part of their long-term planning several years ago and have been wildly successful with all 3. That Germany (and most other western nations) failed to do this themselves is unfortunate, but having a sour grapes attitude about it is not constructive. Cheap solar and cheap batteries are here now. All countries should make the most of it as quickly as possible. Particularly Germany, and I'm happy to see Munich getting one of the first Sodium BESS storage facilities from CATL.
  - leonidasrup 4d ago
    China still produced only 11% of electricity from solar, Germany 18%, so in this metric Germany is better, but import all of it PV panels. And electricity only a part of primary energy consumption in both in China and Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/germany https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/germany I'm interested how China could decarbonize, as they still building a lot of coal power plants. They are slowly decreasing coal electricity production, but ramping up syntetic fuel from coal production. So if Germany wants to follow Chinas path, they should build a lot of solar, wind, coal, some nuclear and hydro power plants, stop building gas power plants. You don't want it, as coal burning still has significant health impacts in Germany. https://caneurope.org/publications/coal-burning-eu-countries-make-their-neighbours-sick/ https://caneurope.org/publications/coal-burning-eu-countries... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373512769_Environmental_Burden_of_Disease_due_to_Emissions_of_Hard_Coal-_and_Lignite-Fired_Power_Plants_in_Germany https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373512769_Environme... The long-term political decission of China is to become independent of energy imports, they are well aware of their energy import vunerability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_dilemma Medium-term thinking in Germany is to import a lot oil, natural gas, PV. Long-term thinking in Germany to import a lot of hydrogen, PV. Nobody talks about Germany becomming energy independent. Best place for batteries for decarbonization is in EVs, not grid stabilization. Even better for decarbonization are electric trains, electric trams, trolleybus, they run directly from electric grid.

defrost 4d ago

> Fossil plants however can be fully decommissioned with 0 remaining costs You say that, but someone still has to pay those costs which are rarely factored in and are significant. To the north of my state we are faced with the costs of decommissioning and removal of 35 platforms, 6076 km of pipelines and static umbilicals; 483 subsea lifts; 11 floating facilities, 120 risers and 548 wells to be plugged - in addition to kilotons of offshore steel and concrete. eg: One project is the Northern Endeavour is a 274-metre floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) facility. The Australian Government took responsibility for the decommissioning of the Northern Endeavour after the liquidation of its owner. These are non trivial undertakings with costs running into the billions.

Kon5ole 4d ago
You're absolutely correct that oil and gas extraction activities need to be properly decommissioned, and that is expensive. But that's a separate activity from shutting down electric power plants. Oil rigs will continue to operate even if all gas and oil power plants were shut down tomorrow, since only about 25% of all oil and gas is used for electricity generation.

leonidasrup 4d ago

Cheap solar, yes you can now buy PV quite cheap. How much of this costs (research, developmemt, building large factories in China) was payed by German EEG money and different subsidies? Also subsidies in form of cheap Chinese coal electricity, polysilicon production is very energy intensive. Costs estimates for Energiewende are in hudreds of bilions of euros. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13705-017-0141-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13705-017-0141-0 https://www.euractiv.com/news/blackout-the-battle-to-rewire-germanys-energiewende/ https://www.euractiv.com/news/blackout-the-battle-to-rewire-... The Private and External Costs of Germany’s Nuclear Phase-Out https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article-abstract/20/3/1311/6520438 https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article-abstract/20/3/1311/652...

Kon5ole 4d ago
>Cheap solar, yes you can now buy PV quite cheap. This is what matters. >How much of this costs (research, developmemt, building large factories in China) was payed by German EEG money and different subsidies? This doesn't matter whatever the answer is. Cheap solar is what matters, not how humanity made the breakthrough or who paid for the research or build-out. Personally, I think China deserves credit here. They made a political decision to develop batteries, solar and EV's as part of their long-term planning several years ago and have been wildly successful with all 3. That Germany (and most other western nations) failed to do this themselves is unfortunate, but having a sour grapes attitude about it is not constructive. Cheap solar and cheap batteries are here now. All countries should make the most of it as quickly as possible. Particularly Germany, and I'm happy to see Munich getting one of the first Sodium BESS storage facilities from CATL.
- leonidasrup 4d ago
  China still produced only 11% of electricity from solar, Germany 18%, so in this metric Germany is better, but import all of it PV panels. And electricity only a part of primary energy consumption in both in China and Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/germany https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/germany I'm interested how China could decarbonize, as they still building a lot of coal power plants. They are slowly decreasing coal electricity production, but ramping up syntetic fuel from coal production. So if Germany wants to follow Chinas path, they should build a lot of solar, wind, coal, some nuclear and hydro power plants, stop building gas power plants. You don't want it, as coal burning still has significant health impacts in Germany. https://caneurope.org/publications/coal-burning-eu-countries-make-their-neighbours-sick/ https://caneurope.org/publications/coal-burning-eu-countries... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373512769_Environmental_Burden_of_Disease_due_to_Emissions_of_Hard_Coal-_and_Lignite-Fired_Power_Plants_in_Germany https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373512769_Environme... The long-term political decission of China is to become independent of energy imports, they are well aware of their energy import vunerability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_dilemma Medium-term thinking in Germany is to import a lot oil, natural gas, PV. Long-term thinking in Germany to import a lot of hydrogen, PV. Nobody talks about Germany becomming energy independent. Best place for batteries for decarbonization is in EVs, not grid stabilization. Even better for decarbonization are electric trains, electric trams, trolleybus, they run directly from electric grid.